Cornell Students can earn 1.5 credits for participating in the Food Hackathon October 20-22 by enrolling in this course:

AEM 4940 LEC 007 “Creativity Sprint: An Entrepreneurship Hackathon”

The course meets during the second 7wks on these dates:

Wednesday Oct 11^th 7:30-9:25pm
Monday Oct 16^th 7:30-9:25pm
Wednesday Oct 18^th 7:30-9pm
Hackathon weekend: Friday 20^th 5-9pm, Saturday 21^st 9am-9pm, Sunday 22^nd 9am-3:30pm

Final Class: Wednesday Oct 25^th 7:30-9:25pm

You can take it pass/fail or graded.
This course also counts towards the Dyson Business minor for Engineers, the university wide Entrepreneurship minor, and the Dyson Entrepreneurship minor.

Course Description

Ideation is a nonlinear iterative process of innovation. Innovation is the implementation of creative ideas. Innovation projects undertaken by businesses are proven successful 4% of the time, which means 96% of the time they fail. Innovation can be incremental (integrative improvements) or disruptive (leapfrog and create new industries, discoveries). Practitioners on the ground are the most important sources of breakthrough ideas. Great ideas do not come about through lightbulb moments. Exercises in divergent thinking, reframing, questioning (navigational, experimental), synthesizing information, enables students to take an idea through to execution through a weekend practicum.

This course will help you:

• Develop the tools necessary to identify real problems (a.k.a., pain points)
• Effectively ideate creative solutions
• Recognize technology/solutions easily adaptable to other industry pain points
• Think through the feasibility, viability, and novelty of ideas/solutions

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, you will have the tools to critique a problem and ideate creative solutions that are: feasible, viable, and novel. Feasible, means that technology, resources, or research exists making it realistic and executable. Viable, means that the cost/resources to create/develop/provide it can be supported by the market or customers (relying on donations, grants, subsidies is not considered viable); Novel, means that an idea/product/solution/service does not already exist, it can be disruptive or iterative (e.g., combining two or more existing solutions/technologies to create a third).

Introduction to Hackathons at Cornell

The experiential component of the course [the hackathons] have been consistently happening at Cornell 4-6 times a year since 2014.  The hackathons have been modified and iterated upon to become what they are today – an intensive 36-hour sprint designed so you can put into practice what you are learning in the classroom. Designed to reinforce and anchor your education through experiential learning. The topic of the hackathon is irrelevant to learning and development, it is the underlying principles that can be utilized in a variety of situations in academia, industry, entrepreneurship, etc.

Instructors:

Professor Brian Lucas and
Lecturer – Cornell Dyson, Ami Stuart, Director, Hackathons – Entrepreneurship at Cornell

Questions:

ami.stuart@cornell.edu |107 Kennedy Hall Ithaca NY 14853 |